Now, she had only to decide what to do with it.
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
The western gate of Dailion was the fourth branch of Ingola’s largest crossroad. It was filled with crowds of people streaming into the city or out along one of the three branching paths. South, towards her family’s village. West, towards the coast and Port Carcarac. North, towards Thloegr. The Wildlands. Enyo.
Delyth.
Alphonse stood to one side as she looked at each path.
Duty. South. To her family’s village that was so small, it couldn’t be found on a map. It didn’t have a name aside from “home.” To a quiet, simple life. A life dictated by the laws of nature. The crops and seasons would tell her when to rise, when to sleep. When to work hard, when to wait, when to pray and when to celebrate. She would see her sisters again, likely mothers already and good wives. Good women. She would see her mother and father, hold them close and cherish the kindness they had raised her with. They had a steadfast resolution in what was right, what was wrong, and how one ought to conduct themselves. She would see Henri and marry him. Her family would be happy and stable due to the union. The village would prosper because it would have a healer. She would make her family and herself proud.
But…
West… To a brand new life. With friends. With no expectations besides perfecting the art of healing. No rules. No limits. She could simply be. And discover what it was to be Alphonse. Not the prude. Not the Vassal. Not the raging, fire-wielding Goddess. It was exhilarating and terrifying to think about. No one would look at her and see a Mother Agathi follower, a wife or a mother or a daughter. Or a survivor of something truly terrible. No one would pity her or look down on her.
Or cherish her.
Or leave her…
And then, of course, there was North. North to the wildlands, ruled by hedonistic Gods and populated by people who had never embraced the quiet, ordered life Ingolans strove for. Lands overrun with torrential downpours and freak snowstorms. With creatures as fierce as their human counterparts and as old as the gods. Ingola didn’t have dragons or sea serpents.
North. To a stoic warrior who awoke feelings within Alphonse that she had never experienced before. Who had fought for her even when all believed her lost. It was a life that might be as complicated and simple as the farm and yet incomparably different. Everything in Thloegr would be completely and utterly unknown. New.
It was the place she’d experienced the greatest happiness and desolation.
Love and hatred.
Hope and fear.
What would she possibly do in Thloegr? Become some clan medicine woman? Sell trinkets for travelers? Be Delyth’s bed-warmer?
If Delyth even wanted Alphonse back. After all, it was because of Alphonse that Delyth was tied to Enyo forever. Because of Alphonse, Delyth would not have this choice, to choose which life she wanted. What if she was happier without the complications that Alphonse represented? What if it had all been a whirlwind romance because of the stress and fear of their journey?
Did she hesitate from this path out of fear of Enyo? Or did she simply not wish to look back at that time in her life?
Duty. Freedom. Love.
South. West. North.
It was time to make a choice.
Trembling, Alphonse stepped off the side of the road into the flow of traffic. She couldn’t let others hold the reins any longer.
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
It had taken far longer than it should have, but Alphonse found the house she was looking for. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but the little cottage with large, airy windows and a weathered, waist-high fence was not it.
There were creeping vines planted beneath the windows, tendrils crawling up the stones of the cottage front and towards the thatched roof. The little path was made of pavers covered in moss. Likely some back or side door was more commonly used.
Alphonse fumbled with the gate latch, and a small set of bells chimed out, attached to a string to announce visitors. The merry sound felt jarring against the bundle of nerves that had replaced her stomach.
The moss muffled her steps up the path, and Alphonse saw her hand was shaking as she knocked on the broad, wooden door.
No one answered.
Alphonse knocked again.
Still, there was silence from within.
With the sun setting behind her, Alphonse realized that the cottage’s owners might be out. Running an errand, tending to chores. Perhaps this was the wrong house altogether. She was about to turn away when she heard a noise out back.
Despite herself, Alphonse eased around the side, peering across a small wooden trellis full of night-blooming flowers. The lovely scent wrapped around her. Soothing her.
There, kneeling in the earth of the garden bed—
“Hello,” Alphonse murmured, her musical voice soft and tentative with anticipation.
A Note to the Reader
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Sisters Dawn & Dusk
1820, Sixth Moon, Waning Gibbous: Brig’ian Mountains
Delyth reached the cave at midmorning, the sun at her back and looking with her, east towards the mountains. They were the same craggy faces that she had known her whole life, but never before had she seen them from the west, in that strip of coastal plain that separated the ocean from the continent’s rocky spine. They seemed lighter, less drenched in shadow, though if that was from the rising sun or the absence of heavy memory, the warrior could not tell.
The cave was a gaping wound in the mountain’s side, leaking blood in shining gold and silver. A dragon stemmed the flow, lying before the entrance to her lair in coils of opalescent
